During a long series of play, we called “Dungeon Wars” (One big dungeon/cavern complex with several skirmishes and battles, and no clear winner.) The DM described a creature, later learned to be an annis, in a way that lead me to picture a Rancor. If you have seen “The Return of The Jedi”, you know that the big hungry monster in Jabba the Hut’s basement is a Rancor. Robert, the DM and my brother, described the annis as eating a man in two bites. I think he overestimated the size of the mouth of an annis, as they are about 8 feet tall and basically humanoid.
That inspired me to say, out of character, “The Rancor”, and make my best imitation of the roar of the rancor.
Later, whenever we encountered a big and tough monster, I would blurt out, “The Rancor” with the same rancor roar.
My brother is a very creative individual, and decided to teach me a lesson to limit my use of such out of character utterances. That is to say, he was tired of “The Rancor” and my roar.
During an adventure that saw all of the players of the major PCs and a major NPC wizard go after a magic bookstand. We all owed favors to this wizard and he called in each of our favors to go get it. Robert set the stage and when we got to a very large room and we knew it had a big, bad monster in it. As if on cue, I said, “The Rancor” and roared.
Suddenly, Robert reached down and pulled a toy Rancor out of a paper grocery bag and set it on the table. We all cracked up, and it was several minutes before we had composure. Only to learn that the Star Wars toy was the actual monster we faced. Griswald was in the front and the Rancor grabbed him and rolled high enough that he swallowed Griswald whole. Robert then picked up my miniature for Griswald and stuffed it down the mouth of this toy. (Scale-wise, a 25 mm miniature is about half the height of Luke Skywalker, so this creature was huge.) Griswald was limited in what he could do, and managed to pull out a dagger to do internal damage as the rest of the party tried to kill the monster without also doing in Griswlad.
Robert gave it like 100 hit points, which was not too many for the rest of the party to wail on it in a few rounds before Griswald suffocated or took damage from stomach acid.
Anyway, lesson learned. I do not make continued out of character noises or references that are annoying to the DM. However, I must say, I deserved it, my character did not die, and we all had a great laugh and still laugh about it today.
What creative ways have you or your GM used out of character statements or actions as plot points in an adventure?
First, it is all how you say the phrase. It should be: “Follow Me!” in a dramatic, heroic voice, with a pause, followed by “And Die!”, also in a dramatic, heroic voice. This is the way my brother mocks my character’s ability to live through the incidents that eliminate 0-level cannon-fodder, er, troops.
There were several grand incidents that we all were aware of, and then one day, my brother Robert, the DM, as an out of play aside, referring to Griswald’s lack of success finding more troops to hire, blurted this out. From that moment on, he, and other players would interrupt the course of play by blurting this out. Such tangential occurrences are one of the things that make RPGs so fun. There is shared history that informs the hilarious things we say that have us in stitches because we are laughing so hard. Without the shared group experience, the rest of the world just looks at us like we’re crazy. Even over board games, something happens or is said that does not come out right, and we are rolling on the floor. Even years later we can make reference to it and those in the know still laugh.
My brother’s campaign is low magic. There are wizards, but a first level magic-user is called a wizard by those who can’t do magic. After years of playing, one player’s character is finally nearing 18th level, with the use of an Ioun stone.
Robert has an area of his campaign called Carbaen Moor, and in it is the Kingdom of Carbaen Moor. Think Scotland in a D&D campaign.
My character is Griswald Stewart, Duke of Stewart. He is a half-elf. His father, a human, was the Duke of Stewart when the Buchanan clan kicked the Stewarts off the throne and drove them out of the Kingdom of Carbaen Moor. This kingdom is based upon highland Scotland. His father fled across the plains to the Elvish wood, and was found by an elf-maid, Griswald’s mother. On a stats note, Griswald is mediocre in his stats as some would see it, his high score is a 14. To overcome this mediocrity, Griswald is a Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User. A fighter because that is what his father wanted, a cleric because that is what his mother wanted, and a magic-user because that is what Griswald wanted.
One time as Griswald traveled across the plains from a growing city back to the Elvish Kingdom. He and his travelling companions, his elvish cousins, were attacked by a wolfwere. Griswald was the only one with a magic weapon, a magic spear. So he bested the beast in single combat. One night, once they were back home, his elvish cousins snuck off with his shield and had a device of a wolf painted on it. It was black and gray on a background of the opposite halves black and gray with red eyes. This lead to people calling him The Wolf.
By Satine Phoenix Here is Griswald, the former social media avatar of Follow Me, And Die!
Griswald starts off thinking his father is the next in line to the throne, so he thinks that if he can become powerful enough, he will one day be king.
It turns out that he has 6 royal cousins all preceding him in the succession. Once he joins up with his cousins and their band, The Red Arrow (long bowmen), with judicious use of cunning and well-rolled dice at critical times, Tameus (the true king) is convinced that they are ready to take back the throne.
The problem is that Griswald knows that he is far from a wizard, but no one will listen to him. So he gets the Elvish Army that is part of his home temple to help out in exchange for exclusive rights to build temples for our Elvish diety in the Kingdom of Carbaen Moor.
Griswald then goes to one of the small clans that stayed loyal to the Stewarts and have suffered under the Buchanans the last 50 years. Through a judicious use of a command spell, that the DM ruled can not be used that way again, the clan lord declared for the Stewarts.
Then Griswald found some mercenaries who would fight for us in return for land for the payment for the officers, there were about 1,000 troops. The 200 or so Red Arrow, 500 or so Elves, and 2,000 or 2,500 Cavendish troops were all Griswald could scrape together.
He did manage to hire 63 troops, plus his father a 7th-level fighter. The Stewarts had about 4,500 troops to the Buchanan’s 7,000. Griswald also went to the most powerful wizard he knew of, Moran Redbeard, and got some scrolls with potent spells to help them in the battle. This cost him a personal favor to the wizard to be paid back later. The scrolls contained a spell my brother came up with, “Battlemagic Fireball”. It is a third level spell, but the area of effect is tripled, so instead of a 30 foot/yard sphere, it is 90 feet. Those, plus the archers of the Red Arrow, and the Elvish Cavalry broke the morale of the Buchanan troops, and the Buchanan pretender, his sons and other high ranking nobles were captured. Tameus personally beheaded the Buchanan pretender and pulled the bloody crown from his severed head. Tameus kept the skull and had it made into a drinking cup.
We then marched to the capital city, Horn of Stone. When we showed up, the guards at the gate failed their morale when Tameus showed them the severed head of the former king.
The incidents that lead up to this are: The Battle of the Plain, where 63 troops and Griswald’s father were killed in our brutal house rules large battle rules. We only used those rules one other time, if I recall correctly. They were harsh, but the results were known quickly. My character’s side of the battle had magic, so we did a lot of damage. Griswald and his father both got a saving throw as “leveled” individuals vs. death. My brother the DM ruled that since Griswald made his save and that his father did not, that his father threw him to safety and killed ten men before he himself was slain. We won the battle and Griswald’s cousin, Tameus, was returned to the throne as the rightful king.
Next was a battle vs. the Temple of Arok and the House of Buchan in the streets of Horn of Stone, the capital city. We discovered that Lord Buchan and others were trying to get Mr. Buchanan, who was next in line of the pretenders to the throne, help them regain the throne. The Elvish Army took the Temple and a well-placed Stinking Cloud and a failed saving throw lead to the capture of the High Priest.
Griswald lead the troops against Lord Buchan’s house. Lord Buchan was a 9th level fighter, who was laying low. The low level humans who were in front of Griswald, when Lord Buchan and his henchman were trapped in a tower. Lord Buchan had a healing potion, so he was able to step back and come back to the fight almost as good as new. He also had a steel sword. (In my brother’s campaign, iron and steel and the knowledge to work them are rare, so Bronze is what is most common.) Griswald’s sword broke, so he had to pull back and rely on his magic.
Next was dungeon wars. In the dungeon to the King’s castle in Horn of Stone, Griswald detected evil, so the King ordered it sealed. That worked until two scullery maids disappeared. Then we proceeded to a long protracted dungeon war with orcs, ogres, ghouls, annis, and a temple of Gruumsh. Griswald got good at using fireballs underground, and only hurt one of his own troops once, and never since. Unlike some of the other spellcasters in the campaign. Griswald and the forces he could scrape together were not enough, so he had to call in other PCs for help. Even that was not enough to clear out the dungeons. The DM got tired of it, I think, as a convenient Earthquake put an end to the dungeon.
Next was Battle of The Gap. This was the second large-scale battle in the campaign. Griswald and the King’s troops verses Lord Gordon, who took over a section of the kingdom in the chaos following the defeat of the Buchanans. The Gordon Clan is the largest clan after the Buchanans. Our forces met and due to well placed spells and the archery of the Red Arrow, the Stewarts were about to wipe out Gordon, when an insect plague from a cleric henchman of Gordon went off, hitting many of Gordon’s own troops. That ended the battle, and allowed Gordon to get away with the remains of his force.
Next was fighting orcs in the Stewart lands. Following the Battle of the Gap, the previously mentioned earthquake hit, with the epicenter at the site of the Battle of the Gap. This was a huge earthquake that damaged most of the Kingdom, and Horn of Stone collapsed. This also affected Gordon and minimized the threat from him. Also affected were the orcs in the ancestral Stewart lands. Griswald helped his ducal cousins reclaim some of their ancestral lands, and then he went to reclaim his own patrimony. Through various battles and mini-campaigns of a few battles, Griswald managed to reclaim his patrimony, and kill or chase off the orcs in it, and fight the orcs in the surrounding territory. He was quite successful, and destroyed or nearly destroyed several orc tribes. These tended to be the smaller tribes, and were far from peak strength due to the earthquake.
Finally is the situation that is like the movie “Zulu”, where we have yet to see if Griswald and his patrimony survive. The two largest orc tribes in the western Stewart lands, were unaffected by the earthquake. These are the Blue Fang and Vile Hand. They teamed up to come down on him hard, as they know they have to strike before Griswald and the Stewarts go after them.
This scenario was on hold for about 15 years, and we finally started playing it over Memorial Day weekend. This is when I found out just how bad it is. None of the other high level PCs/wizards are immediately available, and the closest one is a three day march away. The orcs set the small forest on Griswald’s land aflame, so the smoke will be seen for many miles. It is possible that Griswald’s amazing luck and reputation could pull his bacon out of the fire, but that remains to be seen.
After 15 years, both the DM and I had a lot of notes and plans to consolidate and agree on, and we only played 12 hours or so of game time. Now we have to wait until I can travel back to Missouri from Michigan, and find out if he lives.
What is funny is that two mid-levels PCs that are known to have survived this battle do not yet know how they survived. They were “set-back” to their levels from that time frame, so it is an interesting situation to watch. There are things going on in the game that Griswald is ten years behind on the time line, that it will make a difference if Griswald and any of his henchmen and troops survived.
Robert, my brother, the DM mentioned that he was going to have his son, Steven help him play out the scenario. While the plan was to retire Griswald and he become an NPC, Robert never acted on it. I think because he likes the creative ways I have managed to play Griswald getting out of so many tight spots. Will Griswald’s creativity and amazing luck hold out? Will the orcs overrun the walls and eat his head?
Stay tuned for the next exciting adventure update….
It was about 5 years later that we finally played the conclusion. Griswald and his troops and henchmen managed to do enough damage to the orc forces that they had to make a morale check and failed. If not for that, they were close to breaching the castle wall. I’d love to play in Robert’s campaign again, but being about 600 miles apart and him only playing face to face, I don’t know if that will happen again.
Interesting Fact: Dan Fox, creator of Zweihander [Affiliate Link] got his start in my brother Robert’s campaign. He is friends with Robert’s brother-in-law. They played in Robert’s game starting when they were in middle school.
When we first started playing AD&D and had the new character class of Paladin, we had never encountered that word, so we did not pronounce it correctly.
We said it “pAl – a – din”, like “Aladdin”. We said it the wrong way for a long time. I am not sure which of us found out the correct pronunciation.
We were too young to see the original “Have Gun Will Travel”, and it was never in re-runs when we were growing up. It might have been my mom who corrected us, because she remembered “Have Gun Will Travel.
I do not think there was any other terms that we mangled so badly. We were all well read, and had read “The Hobbit” and “LotR”, and many others, so words were something we knew.
My main character, Griswald Stewart, has a small town at the center of his lands. Long story short, he is a duke who succeeded his father, but his father’s generation of the former rulers of the kingdom were kicked out. The line of false kings let these lands become overrun with orcs in the past 50 years. Griswald and his cousins re-took the kingdom, which is now in a civil war, but a giant earthquake affected most of the kingdom, and the areas of the former Stewart lands. Griswald took this opportunity to take back his patrimony, and managed to drive out the orcs. He then set up in the town abandoned by the orcs.
I used a sheet from a desk blotter that was a giant sheet of graph paper. Setting the scale to 40 feet squares, the entire town fits on the map. The town is roughly 1500 feet by 3000 feet. The grid is four squares to the inch. I lost that desk blotter in several moves. I have not had luck finding them locally at office supply stores. I do not recall which chain of office supply store I originally found it. Google is not helping. I must not have the right terminology to get the correct results.
A few years after he took the town, two of the largest orc tribes, The Blue Fang and The Vile Hand, have put aside their differences and decided to deal with “The Duke” or “The Wolf” (his personal shield device) as he is variously called, BEFORE he sets their sites on them. Griswald has wiped out several smaller orc tribes, and his success in that regard has come back to bite him.
Needless to say, there is a siege situation, and if you have ever seen the movie Zulu, you get the idea of how bad a spot he and the townspeople are in.
We needed to figure out ranges for weapons and spells, so we could get an accurate setting for ranges that were at an angle. I found that the blue lines on standard 3 x5 index cards are spaced at the same scale as 4 square to the inch graph paper. I was able to put together two cards by stapling them together to determine ranges weapons and spells. Of course the orcs are staying outside of these ranges until the orcs catapults can batter a hole in the wall.
It was interesting to see that insect plague has the greatest range of the spells that Griswald and his forces have at their disposal. That is perhaps the most powerful battle magic spell in AD&D for its range, area of effect, duration, and the effect it has on low level creatures. Its one turn (10 round) casting time give plenty of time for things to go wrong. It then takes 8 hours of rest and then the 15 min per level time to re-learn it, so it has a big cost associated with how often it can be use from a cleric’s memory, to offset the effect it can have on a battlefield.
The orcs have observed and taken note of the tales of Griswald, a half-elf Fighter/Cleric/Magic-User of 9th/9th/10th levels, and his henchmen, associates, and followers. They have arrayed themselves into smaller units of 20 to 30 that are spread far enough apart in a checkerboard formation, that a fireball will not affect more than a single group, or those on the edges of four groups (the equivalent of one group). This is the price of fame for an adventurer, the bad guys learn from you the way you learn from them.
One thing Griswald did several times before a few survivors spread the word was to draw the warriors out of their stronghold with the bait of a small force taunting them. He would then lob a few fireballs at them and take out the stragglers back in the fort. He knows better than to have his forces leave their fortifications, so they are bottled up until he can defeat or discourage the attackers, or last until help arrives.
It is not played out so I can’t tell you what happened yet.
There have been many memorable events in the various games I have played in over the years.
One that delights us to this day, is a situation where a high level party was fighting an orc tribe in their lair.
A dwarven fighter, Margus Greystone, entered a room with about 30 orcs in it. He turned around, closed the door and bolted it. This of course got the attention of the orcs. Margus had initiative and shocked the orcs by his behavior, so he had enough time to draw his weapon.
Randell, the player for Margus, then announced, “I hit the one on the left.” Margus is a right-handed dwarf and was about 9th level with a 18/xx style strength and maybe a magic weapon. The combination was that if he hit an orc of one hit die, it would die. So Margus continued to hit the orc on his left, which meant that he left his less well armored right side exposed, but of course, being a high level fighter, had plate mail, and the orcs had a hard time hitting him.
We all watched as the scene played out in a room full of orcs with a barred door blocked by a dwarven tank. It was after a few orcs fell, that the orcs realized that they were all going to die.
Several rounds later, Margus emerged from the room unscathed, but covered in orc blood.
This is my favorite example of hack and slash combined with roleplaying.
What favorite stories like this do you have from your gaming experience?
Quest For The Dice of Destiny was supposed to involve these artifacts, The Dice of Destiny. The players never got to find these dice. My brother, Robert, was the DM
I do not know if it was because the players never lived up to the DM’s expectations, or if he was just ready for a different campaign.
The transition here was for the more well-rounded characters we had to travel by ocean to the area of the new campaign.
The situation ended with play frozen in time, as we never returned to finish the scenario we left off.
My character, Fasbold Torion, was a fighter with a charisma of 3. He had a henchman Flaessan Os, whom Fasbold had saved his life so many times, Flaessan was intensely loyal. In the ocean voyage, they had stopped at an island and found some sort of ruins and encountered a ghost. Both Fasbold and Flaessan were hit by the ghost and the game play stopped with Fasbold aged about 90 years, and Flaessan aged about 60 years.
Prior to the ocean voyage, Fasbold and the party were in the lair of an ettin and Fasbold had found a magic sword but not yet knew what it was. In combat the party was being slaughtered by the ettin. Fasbold managed to role a 20 and decapitated both heads of the ettin, and learned that he had a sword of sharpness. Fasbold sold the sword to make enough money to buy a share in the ship. If he had kept the sword, he might have kept the ghost from aging him and Flaessan.
During the ocean voyage at sea, prior to the island, they were attacked by sahuagin or some such, and the ship was boarded. Flaessan was about to be hit by one and Fasbold threw his dagger and hit it between the eyes for the kill, saving Flaessan one more time.
I still have the hand-drawn character sheets on notebook paper for Fasbold and Flaessan.
Robert and I often joke about Fasbold and Flaessan as old men reliving their adventures from their youth. This over 25 years ago! It is amazing the stories and fun one can reminisce over so many years later.
Robert’s next campaign, is his current campaign, he has run for over 20 years now. I do not know what he might call it. We all just refer to it as “The Fife” for the name of the country where all the action in his campaign started. The fun of this campaign is that each player has multiple characters in different places on the known map, and some are unlikely to ever meet in the game.
My brother, Robert, is my favorite DM. He can improvise almost anything, and never seems to be surprised or disappointed with the actions a player has his character make. He has had what I would classify as four campaigns. The first campaign was the generic catch-all, different dungeons and modules.
His second campaign, was a desert campaign that centered around Abdul’s. Abdul’s was basically a giant shopping center for the adventurers. One could get anything at Abdul’s if you had the gold.
Abdul’s was inside a giant mesa. If one looked up, they could see a Constellation class starship hanging from the ceiling.
I remember having to roleplay equipping our first level characters. I ran a thief, who foolishly asked for thieves picks and tools, and had to avoid the law.
Robert invented a couple of creatures, one was a mount called a quast. It was a fast-running desert creature that needed little water. It ran fast enough that a human rider could cross a large stretch of desert and not have to worry about dying of thirst. The other creature was a flying creature. I do not remember what he called it, but they came with a special saddle that had the commands on the saddle, and the word “avaunt” which meant to take flight.
One time two players had these new gizmos, basically Chinese repeating crossbows that could fire 10 bolts a round. They went to a cave and were trapped by a huge hoard of orcs, and rather than rely on our new weapons as Robert, the DM, thought we would. We instead drew our swords and died, a TPK becuase we did not rely on the tools the DM let us have.
Another incident we had in the desert was coming to an oasis and stumbling across a dimensional rift where a bunch of French Foreign Legionnaires were fighting desert tribesmen.
Abdul’s became a crutch for the players in this game and the DM had a great solution. Abdul had done something to offend some ghostly host that one night came and took away Abdul’s piece by piece, and we all watched it disappear. This was a transition to a new campaign Robert called “Quest For The Dice of Destiny”.
Yesterday, I wrote about science fiction RPGs: Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World. Traveller, and Scout – a home-brew RPG.
Today, I will touch on the others that my old group from high school played.
GangBusters was based on the gangsters and FBI of the Roaring 20s & 30s, a la Al Capone and Eliot Ness. I do not remember playing that more than a few times. This was a TSR product.
Top Secret was a TSR RPG based on James Bond, and other spy movies. This is one RPG that our group got into and we played quite a lot. I still have my hand-written character sheet on notebook paper from the 80’s. We just sort of drifted away from this game. I think after high school graduation and the separation of our gaming group, we no longer had the large base to take turns GMing so that one GM would not get totally burnt out preparing all the time. It is hard to prepare one game, let alone attempt to GM multiple games in multiple systems.
Boot Hill, also by TSR, is a western based game. We also played this one quite a lot. I actually owned this game and was working on a campaign and preparing to GM, when for some reason it never happened. I don ot recall what happened to my game materials.
Game cross-over. One of the problems our group encountered was that when one person was a player in one game and a GM in another, that person could be vengeful on the players when their turn came to be GM. We played one scenario in AD&D where two good-aligned characters killed the evil Drow character of the guy who was our GM for Boot Hill. He was very unhappy and swore to kill our characters in Boot Hill. He did kill our characters in Boot Hill, but at least he made it a memorable “Alamo” scenario, and while we did not appreciate the vengeance angle, at least he made it enjoyable.
Another similar scenario occurred when another DMs campaign had a player whose character was extremely evil and high level. My brother, Robert, and I had two new players in this campaign, and our stated goal was to get powerful enough to top this evil. So here we were 1st or 2nd level and this powerful 10th or higher level bad-guy is allowed to hear about these two new upstart PCs and tracked us down. We were no match for him, but my first level M-U used magic missle to blind one eye before he was struck down. This same evil character was played by the same evil character in the other D&D campaign that we slew, and who was the Boot Hill GM.
These problems with cross-over and what I would consider poor DMing to allow a high level evil character to even hear about the minor threat two low level characters posed, helped lead to the shrinking of our base of players. The DM did not have to tell this other player what we had stated our purpose was out of character.
Have you faced similar cross-game problems? How have you handled them to avoid hurt feelings?
I think it is one thing to have a party of NPCs be the nemesis of the player party, but it is troublesome to me on how to handle to player parties in the same campaign to interact in a way that brings enjoyment to both groups. If there are of opposites with one evil and the other good, I see it as a recipe for disaster and a sure-fire way to shatter a group. If I had to GM such a situation, I would try to discourage one player or group of players from trying to kill another, no matter the motive, or at least explain to them that it needed to be in the purview of the game and to be careful not to break friendships over it. As DM, perhaps put obstacles that prevent such incidents, unless there was a stated shared mindset that such activity was acceptable and that no hard feelings would result.
Roleplaying, like acting, touches on our real emotions and can soon lead to conflict, if one is not careful to make boundaries and limits. This is why people with untreated mental illnesses should not role play, as it can lead to problems. Such things lead to the bad name D&D had in the 80s, and was the source of the real problems of that gamer played by Tom Hanks in that TV movie in the 80s. It is meant to be a game that is fund, not the source of anger that dissolves friendships or drives borderline nut jobs over the edge. No disrespect intended to those with mental or emotional issues. If we are well-adjusted and approach it as a game that is meant to be fun, there should be few disappointments.
It is all too easy to become emotionally attached to our characters, and to feel loss or pain when that character has a setback in the game or dies.
In our gaming group I GM’d for Metamorphosis Alpha [Affiliate Link]. I am not sure whatever happened to our game materials. I remember a big map for the starship, and that the rulebook had tables for the characters to determine if they figured out how stuff they found worked.
I remember one session where I had the party find an airlock and a hangar bay, and in the hangar bay was a Cylon fighter. I grew up when the original BattleStar Gallactica series was new. We often “stole” ideas from TV and movies and books. I think I even had some token Cylons for them to fight. The players got to the ship and figured out how to fly it and flew around the exterior of the Warden.
We cracked up at some of the ridiculous things we through into the game and were able to do. We did not play more than a few sessions, but we cracked up and had a lot of fun.
I do recall, although it has been a long time, that the rules had a lot of similarity to Gamma World. I did a little Googling, and am right, MA was before GW and had an influence on the rules, which were based on D&D.
Gamma World [Affiliate Link] was a game where we had a lot more sessions. I am not sure what happened to those materials over the years.
I see the Gamma World has been updated several times over the years, and that a company has licensed it from WoeC for the current incarnation.
I also found that Jim Wrad still controls MA and has a new version soon to be released. There are also MA materials on DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. The first edition PDF is availabe, and there is a lot of information in the free 6 page preview PDF. It is amazing how well a single rulebook can encompass all one needs to know to play an RPG. I guess it helps if you have played one already, or have experienced players to show you the ropes.
I remember when the High School Science Fiction club was the focus of an article in our school paper. It had a hilarious typo in the list of games that we played, “Camel World” instead of Gamma World. Our group made a lot of references to mutant camels after that, and is an inside joke that still brings a chuckle to this day.
I am not having success finding a science fiction book that reads like an adventurer’s log of MA or GW. It was easy to tell how much that book influenced both MA and GW. It finally came to me and was able to Google it: “Hiero’s Journey” by Sterling E. Lanier. I have not read it since the 80’s.
One person in our group was fond of DMing modules from TSR, and one time we did play Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and encountered the ferocious Vegepygmies. That is about the only thing I remember from that module. I am not sure how much our DM stuck to the module, and how much he modified it. I did not have the cash to afford lots of modules, so I only purchased two for AD&D, Village of Hommelet and Ravenloft. I remember the ooh and ahh factor of the perspective maps in Raveloft. We never played those modules, but we loved the cool maps. I bought my copy of the Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide this year, just for the information on how to do these maps.
We did do our own home-brew games. One was a space pirate combat game, that morphed to be a two planets in a solar system at war game. We did not play those more than a few times once we bought Imperium, and had a friend with the Star Treck game with ship to ship combat.
We did play Traveller a few times. It was unusual in that it relied solely on six-sided dice. The person who introduced us to it was not very skilled as a DM so his interest in the game did not translate well for the rest of us in the Science Fiction Club in high school.
We did come up with our own RPG, called Scout. Scouts were interstellar explorers who also were like a combination of marines and modern day Spartans. They were tough and could take you out hand-to-hand or with weapons. Although when we played we tended to focus on the use of weapons. We borrowed from other games to cover the situations that we needed. We played several sessions. My brother, Robert, was GM, and he wished that our characters would rely on martial arts before resorting to blasters and disintegration grenades. We just sort of stopped playing, but Robert started a couple of short stories, based on Scout, and his vision of what a scout was. We were all anxious for his next installment every few days. Robert is the kind of writer who can just sit down and write high quality stuff of the top of his head. Soon the bits of the story just stopped too.
I am sure we could probably resurrect Scout as either a module/add-on for another system, or update our home-brew rules. Robert may still have them, I will have to check. It would be fun to have our old materials as a PDF and used by other gamers around the world. Maybe even making a little money via RPGNow might be possible.
What games did you explore and play for awhile, but then settled on one game as “your game”? For me my game is AD&D.
Did you ever make up your own games? Board game or RPG?
Another time I DM’d I had an adventure that started in town with a festival/carnival, and one of the major NPCs with the festival was actually the bad guy. The clue was the way he laughed. However, it was not until the party was in the dungeon that I realized that when I go to the note about using this laugh in the dungeon, I had not given them the clue in town.
In my inexperience, I gave it away by describing the laugh in exacting detail, as one they heard at the carnival, so it was a give away that ruined the fun of the players figuring it out.
There are just certain things you cannot forget in an adventure when you are a DM, especially when it is one that you designed yourself.
